Ill Fares the Land-Migrants and Migratory Labor in the United States
Author: McWilliams, Carey
Date Published: 1967
Across the broad acres of American agriculture, a shadow has been lengthening. It is the shadow cast by an army of migrant farm families uprooted from the land, which, here and there, merges with the moving shadows cast by processions of migratory workers following one of the established crop cycles. Although the number of families making up this migrant army has been rapidly increasing, it has only been of recent years that public attention has been focused upon the problem which they present. Today, by a slow process of discovery, identification and recognition, we have become aware, if not altogether visually conscious, of these shadowy figures on the highways. But we have not yet become fully aware of their significance; we are just now discovering the "message" which they carry with them wherever they go. For the migrants, as Mr. Jonathon Daniels has said, "are only the messengers, carrying both news and shame to the whole land." Their message is that a great change is taking place in American agriculture-that the industrial revolution has finally hit the farmer
Date Published: 1967
Across the broad acres of American agriculture, a shadow has been lengthening. It is the shadow cast by an army of migrant farm families uprooted from the land, which, here and there, merges with the moving shadows cast by processions of migratory workers following one of the established crop cycles. Although the number of families making up this migrant army has been rapidly increasing, it has only been of recent years that public attention has been focused upon the problem which they present. Today, by a slow process of discovery, identification and recognition, we have become aware, if not altogether visually conscious, of these shadowy figures on the highways. But we have not yet become fully aware of their significance; we are just now discovering the "message" which they carry with them wherever they go. For the migrants, as Mr. Jonathon Daniels has said, "are only the messengers, carrying both news and shame to the whole land." Their message is that a great change is taking place in American agriculture-that the industrial revolution has finally hit the farmer
